Want to land that job interview? Here are 10 spellings you need to get right

Name: Curricula vitae.

Age: 120 – the first known use, to mean “résumé”, dates from 1902.

Appearance: One side of A4, often misspelt.

Well, come on: it’s Latin. Most of us didn’t have the benefit of a classical education. Surely “CV” is fine? That’s not the misspelt part. The language-learning app Preply has trawled through the database of CVs on the jobs site Indeed and compiled a list of the words most commonly misspelled by candidates in applications.

And what are they? Experienced, successful, counselled, professional, responsible, behaviour, judgement, focused, achieved and independent.

Yawn. Fine, I’ll pin them on the fridge. You’re going to need another magnet: a survey in January of 147,000 UK CVs by the recruiter Adzuna found 62.4% had at least one spelling error and came up with an alternative list of offenders: organisation, modelling, behaviour, equipment, labour, judgement, transferable, practised, liaising and demeanour.

These won’t help with my CV. What about embezzled, chinchilla, vaudeville, indict, vengeance and idiosyncrasies? You’re on your own with those.

Some of this is about American spelling rather than misspelling, isn’t it? Aren’t we fine with the odd Z and dropping some Es these days? Yes, several of the “misspelt” words are US spellings, rather than wrong.

Hang on: I’ve just checked the Guardian style guide and it uses “judgment”. This newspaper is, of course, famed for its excellent spelling.

Recruiters need to overlook the odd typo. It’s a jobseeker’s market at the moment. According to the Office for National Statistics, the rate of growth in job vacancies slowed between April and June. With a recession looming, it might be worth deploying the spellchecker before you send out a batch of applications.

But, honestly, does spelling really matter? Language is fluid – and even more so since the advent of the web. Apparently, “rubarb” is proliferating and may soon supplant rhubarb. Do you also have rhubarb on your CV? In the sense that, in the long run, we will all be dead, no, it doesn’t matter. But if you want to get a job, yes, it does: spelling mistakes always top lists of turn-offs for recruiters.

In my experianced judgment, focussing on a candidate’s spelling rather than their achevements, behavior or demeanor is a grave error. I see what you did there. Unfortunately, we will not be moving forward with your application at this time. I wish you all the best in your future endeavours.

Do say: “Standardised orthography is a recent phenomenon: before the 18th century, we spelled things however we wanted.”

Don’t say: “I keep mispelling ‘misspelled’.”